Divine Presence

I like those images where you feel the presence of God by the visual queues.

Sometimes it’s a ray of sun, the glistening light, stunning patterns or colors. This to me looks like the mouth of God in the middle of saying something profound. I often feel as though I would prefer it if this was the way God spoke to me. Perhaps that means I should work myself over some more, or is that work on myself some more! LOL

What it might look like if God spoke to you.

I was very concerned with capturing the highlights when I took this photograph, my histogram was not too close to the right. As I recall (I did it so long ago 😉 I added some contrast, by raising the black point, to give it depth when processing the image.

Double Soft Extreme

This image is a bit of an abstraction, feel free to guess what they are before reading at the bottom of the post.

Double soft because the subject matter is very soft to the touch and a soft focus technique is employed in the creation of this photograph. This photograph reminds me of tall ocean waves of a cartoon nature, riding about on the ocean surface. Perhaps I should edit in a little boat being tossed about?  No.

This is an extreme close up of some flower petals, still on the flower, still on the stem, still on the plant, still planted in the back yard – I felt a little compulsive there.

I achieved this shot with the help of three extension tubes inserted between the body of the camera and the lens.

Simply Resplendent

Bold, beautiful, warm and tender, reaching out and up, searching for that which will nourish and complete its existence.

I love to capture the colors, textures, patterns of flowers of all sorts, even those deemed as ‘weeds’. I don’t care what it’s purpose is or if it ‘should’ be there, I love to capture them when and where I see them.

This is one my wife grew in the yard.  She had cut some and brought them into the house to brighten it up a bit. I though it was a good chance to borrow one and bring it into the studio so that I could capture its beauty without the distraction of background/foreground, to be held in high, on display and appreciated in full without distraction.

I usually use two lights for flowers in the studio, one hard light coming from the side or slightly behind with the other very soft, filling in the shadows,  is just off to one side of me. I usually take between fifty and one hundred photographs, moving lights, changing settings and just ‘playing’ with it until I think “WOW, that’s cool” and what ever else I do, it doesn’t get better.

It’s actually much safer shooting in the studio, you see, we have a garden shark.

A little Graphic Art

I’m not a purist when it comes to photography – I edit, retouch and muck about with images in Photoshop (tm Adobe). I tweak them to what ever degree I feel like will enhance the image to make viewing it a better experience. I’d rather not mess around too much with the nature shots, so they’re mostly as shot with perhaps a little exposure compensation or color correction.

In this case it is more the editing and design work that make the photograph pop. The original photograph is of a fuse standing on end on a posing stool. Actually three different photographs of the same fuse with three different filters run on each image and then tiled to create the poster – originally named “Poster A”, as a working title, but now named “9th Order”

The back story is that I showed up to a friend’s house and was greeted with exuberant enthusiasm as he waved the fuse  triumphantly in my face. He proudly carried on about how he had blown a fuse in his Cerwin Vega speakers. These were not small speakers, he had endured enjoyed many an hour of full on Rock -N- Roll at sonic levels approaching a jet airplane on take off, putting this little fuse to the test and finally it gave in before he did. I took it from him and said that it must be forever immortalized in some cool art, he got the first print of the poster – still hanging at his house with his collection of rock posters, albums and memorabilia.

O.K., this one isn’t mine but was too cute to not share – check out the seal apparently trying to get in on the photo, from Pintrest.

Source: cuteoverload.files.wordpress.com via Sonia on Pinterest

On the Run

This shot is from a series I call “On the Run”, defined as such by the fact that all of the images were shot from moving vehicles, well, while I was moving in some manner. Don’t worry, my wife was driving while I took this one.

I’m working on an idea for a photo frame that backlights the photograph so that they seem to glow. I think this shot will make a really cool one. Guess I won’t know until I build one.

If memory serves me correct (Hahaha, no it doesn’t, I pulled the date & time from the Meta Data) I took this photo on my wife’s birthday, July 3rd in 2009 at 7:56 p.m.

I did give her a copy, I don’t remember the occasion I gave it to her for 😦 So when will you be able to pull meta data from gifts? One day there’ll be an app for that in the new Google Glasses coming out soon.

Stuck in Ice

Today’s title serves as a double entendre, because the subject of the photo is encased in ice and this is the second post on things in ice, it was quite accidental, but I noticed it.

I am slightly fascinated by things that can be frozen solid and then come back to life in the thaw, but it’s more the fascinating imagery of this shot that enthralled me.

This was taken in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the parking lot at the corner of W. Huron and S. First St. I was just walking around looking for icy scenes when I spotted this.

Change of Pace

Since all of my posts so far have been photographs I’ve taken in Hawaii, I though I’d better show something different – just so you know I don’t live there and I really am into variety.

I live in Michigan and the weather here is a lot more diverse that it is in Hawaii. When I was in Hawaii I thought it was kind of strange that the weather would often change only one degree from day-to-day. Here in Michigan a ten to twenty degree shift is not too uncommon, sometimes during one morning or afternoon. I won’t get into the 30-40 degree jumps, they’re annoying.

Today’s photograph was taken the day after one of those ‘It’s ten below zero degrees and it’s raining – REALLY!?’ After an hour of that there are some interesting sights to see, even where the subject would otherwise have been quite drab and uninteresting.

While it produces some very interesting photographs, wandering around in the winter isn’t as fun and inviting as a tropical location, but hey – it still draws me out there 🙂

Sunset on the Dock

I got this shot as I was entering a restaurant located on the dock in Oahu, Hawaii. I was quite glad that I had brought the camera along, even to dinner. I was in fact rarely with out my cameras, lenses and tripod. While some may think the camera gets in the way of the fun, I tend to think the camera IS the fun and thus often was wearing a large hiking backpack loaded down.  My wife being the true sport she is often was wearing a second backpack so that there was room for snacks, water and dry shoes as well.

As I reviewed the images I had taken on my 2010 Hawaii trip I realized the I had relatively few sunset photographs, compared to how many I feel as though I should have created.

There were many truly spectacular locations and opportunities to have created more of these, but honestly in reflection by the time sunset came I was generally too tired and too busy.

I would often spend the entire day driving, walking and hiking trails, towns, mountains anywhere that seemed appealing. Often by evening I was whipped and busy loading the images onto my hard drive.  While loading the images may not seem like daunting task, it was.

I had borrowed a friends old laptop (big thanks to Kim Lennox) and brought an external drive to store the images on, mostly good planning. The problem lies in my execution, I did not try out my storage system until I was in Hawaii – that’s a little late for truley GOOD planning.

I realized that my drive was formatted for a P.C. and I had an Apple laptop which wanted to reformat my drive before using it. My hard drive was already loaded with images so I did not want to reformat. Luckily my supportive wife pointed out that there was an Apple store on Oahu and the helpful geniuses were able to show me a drive that would work for both the Apple and P.C., after reformatting – a couple (hundred)  bucks more and now I’m in the game.

Unfortunately the laptop was older and only connected to my drive was via USB 1. For those not gasping in disgust you need to know that loading the 2-8 Gb memory cards via USB 1 was a very slow process requiring me to be hanging around the condo for most of the entire evening to swap out memory cards as they loaded – as it turns out having a Mai Tai (or two) on the balcony isn’t really such bad way to spend a few hours :). At least it was slow enough that I could start a 8 GB card, go off to dinner and come back just in time to find it finishing and start the process with the next card.

Big Waves

I consider myself to be extremely lucky to add this image to my portfolio, for several reasons. It’s not luck that I chose the right lens, shutter speed or F-stop – I am a professional photographer after all.

I am lucky because I:

Was in Hawaii –  How many of us get to ever go there?

Was able to have great equipment to use – Thank you to my wife for the wedding gift!

Was there when the waves were – waves this big are rare & I was there to capture them – thank you God!

This particular shot was a bit of lock as well, actually stubborn resolve. I took hundreds of wave photos this day in search of the perfect shot. What I love and hold dear about this shot is the six clearly defined waves running from side to side across the whole frame. No other shot is so dynamic (in my mind) as this one.

As a side silly note, I have a collection of photographs of myself in a chef jacket which were taken in various locations areound the world. I was never a chef – I ‘borrowed’ it from a friend just to send him photos that looked wacky – why would a chef be standing in a rocky river bed?  After seeing the first round he gave me an extra jacket to further the cause – Thanks Dale!

P.S. I sat up the tripod, but my wife took the photograph – Thanks for playing along 🙂 (She thought it was silly and didn’t understand).

Quality Test

This is a test of the photo quality post system, this is only a test.

And why am I testing, because I didn’t like the quality of the first photo I posted.  After looking at the blog in my browser I noticed ‘bad stuff’ , which was created by my saving the Jpg at a low quality in order to get the file size down so that it would load quickly for you (whoever you are).

I love quality though, so if I lose some viewers because of slow load time, so be it!

Here is a repost of the photograph from my last post, at two different qualities – 40% and 20% – for those who care about techno-drivel. Oh yes, I like to make up words even if they are oxymoronic.

Please post a comment and let me know if you A) don’t notice a difference B) Like the top photo better or C) Like the bottom photo better – Thanks!

F.Y.I. This was taken on the Maunawili trail 😉